


at the top of a tower (with you)

by rosycheeked



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Carry On References, F/F, First Kiss, Getting Together, Hogwarts Astronomy Tower, Hogwarts Inter-House Unity, Internal Monologue, M/M, POV Harry Potter, Suicidal Thoughts, eighth year
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-05
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:14:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23495137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosycheeked/pseuds/rosycheeked
Summary: When Harry climbs to the top of the Astronomy Tower on a sleepless night, he's not expecting to find Draco Malfoy there. And he's certainly not expecting to find Malfoy intending to jump.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter, Hermione Granger/Pansy Parkinson (mentioned)
Comments: 28
Kudos: 349





	at the top of a tower (with you)

**Author's Note:**

> Hey!
> 
> Look at me, I finally wrote another Drarry fic! Not sure how long that'll last, though. Next one'll be either Stony or Snowbaz, I'm calling it now.
> 
> Speaking of which, the title comes from a passage from Baz's POV in _Wayward Son_ by Rainbow Rowell, a book I absolutely adore—
> 
> "Not to you; you grew up in a mansion," [Simon says.]  
> "I grew up at the top of a tower," I say. "With you."
> 
> You'll have to read the books to get it. ;)
> 
> Anyway, I hope you all like this one! 
> 
> E
> 
> *warnings for mild cursing, suicidal thoughts, prevented suicide attempt, and reference to previous minor character death*

Harry’s having a bad day.

Yeah, everyone has them, but eighth year especially he’s been having really vivid nightmares about losing his friends, losing his family, and when he wakes up, he’s just in a terrible mood. Hermione (Ron hadn’t come back this year) has learned to just leave him alone when he’s like this.

So Harry’s having a bad day, and he usually gets through them okay; today, however, is just dragging on and on and by the time Charms ends, he’s very close to snapping.

Of course, Flitwick thinks this newfound belief in inter-House unity and such is in need of support (and it is, but only because no one besides the professors really believe in it), so he pairs them between their Houses as much as possible. 

And because today is a bad day, Harry’s gotten paired with Draco Malfoy. Again. Flitwick seems to especially love pairing the two of them. Harry’s beginning to suspect Flitwick is putting them together for a reason. 

Hermione just smiles and shakes her head whenever he brings it up, though. Whenever he brings up Malfoy at all.

She’s gotten over it, the rivalry between them. It’s all in the past, she tells Harry, and Harry just watches from the relative safety of his seat in the Great Hall as she slides in beside Parkinson (Pansy, she tells Harry to call her, with this little quirk of a smile, and Harry knows it means something more than just _we’re friends, Harry, of course we’re on a first name basis_ ).

He knows, but he never says anything. Kind of like him and Malfoy, actually—but that’s completely beside the point, which has nothing to do with Malfoy. Harry’s having a bad day.

Well, it kind of has to do with Malfoy, but really all Malfoy’s doing is making Harry’s bad day a lot worse.

He’s spent the entire class attempting to wandlessly and wordlessly cast a Diffindo on a piece of rope Draco is holding between his hands.

A partner is supposed to be encouraging, right? Or at least supposed to egg him on a little. But all Malfoy’s done is sit here in silence and stare at Harry like he’s murdered his cat or something. 

Maybe he’s having a bad day, too, thinks Harry, but that’s his inner Hermione speaking. Of course Malfoy practically gets off on making Harry’s life hell.

...

Harry can’t sleep.

Why does everything start this way? He’s having a bad day, he can’t sleep, it goes on and on—

He’s only looking for a bit of peace, and usually he can find it at the top of the old Astronomy Tower, where no one really goes because the staircase is mostly destroyed, but if you’re careful you can get up fine.

The railing at the top has been removed, too, and Harry stubbornly does not think about anyone falling off it.

Or anyone he’s already seen—

Anyway. He’s climbing to the Astronomy Tower, the Invisibility Cloak thrown over his shoulders because he’s an eighth year but he still has a curfew. He takes the Cloak off and tucks it away as he climbs the stairs.

And yeah, he’s breaking the rules, but apparently so is—

“Malfoy?”

There, at the pitched edge of the Tower floor, clutching a bit of remaining railing attached to a column for support, is Draco Malfoy. Harry would recognize that shock of blond hair anywhere.

“Potter,” Malfoy replies, dipping his chin in a curt sort of recognition.

How does his face so efficiently convey ‘go away’?

Well, Harry’s not about to go away just because Malfoy’s glaring at him. This was his spot first, his view of the grounds and the stars at once, his place to find peace and pretend the home he’d always had at Hogwarts hadn’t burned in the fires of the War.

“What are you doing here?” Harry asks, trying not to sound too hostile.

From the pinched look on Malfoy’s face, he hasn’t quite succeeded. “None of your business.”

He looks down at the ground, adjusts his grip on the bit of railing, swallows, and steps—

Wait, he isn’t—Malfoy isn’t—

“You’re not going to—you’re not thinking of—“ Harry stammers dumbly, hurriedly striding towards Malfoy, at the edge of the Tower.

“And so what if I am?” Malfoy snaps, rather loudly. Seeing as they aren’t arguing yet.

“You—you can’t,” Harry tells him. “Come off it, Malfoy.”

His heart’s pounding in his throat. Malfoy couldn’t have come up here to—to jump, could he?

Malfoy takes another step, learning forward, and the ground is so far away and Harry’s there, thank God, there to grab Malfoy’s wrist and pull him back.

“Get your _hand_ off me, Potter,” Malfoy spits. He’s shaking.

Was he actually going to jump, then?

“Please don’t,” Harry says, softer, because maybe if he asks nicely.

“Are you going to stop me, then?” snarls Malfoy. “Saint Potter, always the hero, going to save poor, broken, Draco Malfoy from falling to his death.”

“Stop it,” Harry says. “You know I don’t mean it like that, Malfoy—“

“Oh, do I?” he jerks his arm out of Harry’s grasp. “Tell me, Potter, what am I to go on living for, then? My father in Azkaban? My mother, driven half-insane from house arrest and shame, who can barely recognize me anymore? The third years who see me in the halls and send jinxes at my back when they think I’m not looking? The professors, who flinch when they look at me?” He yanks back the sleeve on his other arm. The Dark Mark, faded but there, disfigured by scars from someone who looks like they took a knife to it and stopped halfway. “ _This?_ ” he hisses.

Harry says nothing. He’s noticed Malfoy is subdued this year, isolating himself, but this?

“So tell me. What am I to go on living for?”

He has the urge to say me. But he doesn’t, because where had that come from? Live for him?

“Look,” Harry replies, trying to be kind, trying to pick the right words, “I can’t—I won’t let you jump off this tower, Malfoy. You—I’ll jump too. If you jump, I’ll jump too.”

Malfoy glares at him sideways. He looks at the ground, then back up.

Finally, he says: “No.”

“No?”

“Fuck off, Potter. Run back to your little friends who worship you.”

“Malfoy, I don’t want to be worshipped!” Harry exclaims, and these aren’t the words he’s looking for, but they’re something. “I want—I want to be treated like a normal human being, not like a hero, not like a savior, but just me, Harry.”

“Admirable, Potter,” Malfoy sneers, but he’s listening, he can see Malfoy’s listening.

“I want to be laughed at and mocked and teased instead of grovelled to, fought with and shouted at and insulted instead of idolized, and fuck, but you’re the only one who does that. So please, humor me, and come away from there?”

What? He—what?

What did he just say to Malfoy? Is he being possessed? 

The tips of Malfoy’s ears have gone pink. Clearly Harry has gone mad. First he sees Draco Malfoy about to jump off the Astronomy Tower to his death, then he tells him that he needs him to live so that Harry can be...disrespected? Treated like an equal?

Since when does Malfoy treat him like an equal? They barely speak to each other!

He can hear Hermione’s voice in his head. _Honestly, Harry, just because it’s Malfoy—_

But it’s _Malfoy_. Harry wouldn’t—

He wouldn’t—

“No,” Malfoy says. The tips of his ears are no longer pink.

“No?” Harry echoes weakly.

(His thoughts are off to the races, though, while he stands there half-gaping at Malfoy. Hermione...and Pansy? Him and Malfoy? Him and _Malfoy_?)

“I am sorry, you know,” Malfoy says, “about everything.”

“Me too.” He means it. They both mean it. “We were—“

“Old enough to understand what we were doing, Potter,” Malfoy chides.

(Years of memories flit through his head: watching Malfoy across the Great Hall, sniping at him across classrooms, eighth year and they’re sharing a dorm, and bantering in the dark, and what has Harry been _doing_? Him and _Malfoy_? It had been so much easier to go on pretending they were enemies. It would be so much easier.)

Harry sighs. “I suppose.”

And Malfoy takes that blasted step again, the one that means he’s about to—

“No!” Harry cries, and grabs Malfoy’s wrist again.

Malfoy turns his head to look at him. Looks down at Harry’s hand around his wrist, and back up at him, and then up to the stars.

He looks like he’s about to cry.

“I don’t have time for your savior complex, Potter,” he whispers.

“Malfoy, look at me.”

And Malfoy looks at him.

“Draco,” Harry says, and his voice tangles somewhere along the way. “We have all the time in the world.”

(It must be true, then. Must be why Harry can swear he sees Malfoy smile sometimes, when he’s turned away or when he thinks it’s too dark. Must be why Harry can hear the laugh in his voice when he gets the last word. Hermione’s right, as always. Were they always destined to end this way, him and Malfoy? Or had some fateful choice along the way, some unknown fork where they had each chosen converging paths, led them here, to this tower, to this night? Him and Malfoy?)

It’s just a matter of saying it now.

“Why?” Harry asks.

Malfoy sighs, extricating his wrist from Harry’s grip once more. “I told you, Potter.”

Harry smiles, a half-smile.

Malfoy raises an eyebrow. Lowers it.

“I told you, Harry,” he says, and it’s less of a concession than Harry thought it would be. It feels right, and Harry fights the overwhelming urge to laugh. “There’s nothing left to live for. And I thought it was—apt—that I do it here, where—“

He gestures to the spot where Dumbledore had stood, before.

If Harry closes his eyes, he can still see it. Him, invisible and immobilized, only able to watch as Dumbledore—as Snape—

If Harry closes his eyes, he can still see it: Draco Malfoy, about to lower his wand, about to switch sides.

And that’s what does it. He can’t talk as well as Dumbledore did, but here he is, and Dumbledore’s gone, and he’s got to save Draco, and isn’t this what it’s always come down to?

Him and Malfoy?

Harry reaches out a hand. There’s no words, no wrist-grabbing.

(How many times has he thought of the handshake? How many times has Draco thought of the handshake? One seemingly innocuous moment, an open door in a barrier scarcely let down, slammed shut just as quickly. Draco had been an arse then, but he isn’t now. Well, he is. But Harry, if he’s honest, likes it. The past can stuff it. It’s him and Malfoy now.) 

Draco raises an eyebrow.

“Come away from the edge,” Harry says.

Nothing.

“We can—live for each other,” Harry adds. It feels like less of a concession that he thought.

Draco raises the other eyebrow.

“Fuck you,” he tells Harry, and takes his hand.

“Is that a yes?”

As much of a triumph as this is, he wishes he didn’t sound so breathless.

“Of course it is, you half-wit,” Draco replies, walking off the ledge and to Harry with the grace of a damned ballerina. “I’m—“

He stops walking. And talking. And the tips of his ears turn pink again.

“Hey, Draco,” Harry says, smiling for real now, a whole smile. Something’s clicked into place in his chest.

Draco scowls, and it doesn’t look menacing at all. He’s still holding Harry’s hand.

“I’m in love—“

Draco kisses him.

_Draco_ kisses _him_. Well, that was a welcome twist.

There are no fireworks. There is no bond that snaps into place, there are no tears. Their arms are rather awkwardly squeezed between their bodies, Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy under the stars, smiling against each others’ mouths, too much teeth to be a good kiss but it’s them and it’s there and that’s all that matters.

They don’t want to go to sleep, not after that. So Harry sits with Draco at the edge of the Tower, and it’s slanted, so they hold hands between them and the columns on either side, Harry swings his legs a bit and smiles, because he’s never going to be tired of this. The stars and Draco and the world at their feet.

He feels weightless. He feels unstoppable.

“I could come back tomorrow night, you know,” says Draco.

Harry gives him a look. “You won’t.”

Draco parrots, “I won’t?” and Harry knows, he knows that when he said they’d live for each other that from this day on they really would. He promises his life away to Draco anyway.

“I told you, I’ll jump too.”

“And we couldn’t have that.”

“Nope. Think how devastated all my _fans_ would be.”

Draco snorts, and Harry holds his hand a bit tighter, because he can. Because he can have this now.

The moon’s directly overhead and its light catches Draco’s profile just so, and Harry turns to look at him.

And he thinks: how strange they must look, two boys perched on the edge of a dilapidated tower—one dark-haired and bright and one blond and twice as beautiful—holding hands, smiling like they’ll never stop. 

What a pair they make, Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy.

(Was it fate, then? Was it the converging paths and subtle choices that brought them here? Maybe, but it’s also the way they’ve orbited each other their whole lives, spinning apart and apart and—like they are each the other’s gravity—back together. Of course they would end up this way.

Because it always comes back to this: him and Malfoy.)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! If you leave me a comment I'll love you forever!
> 
> E


End file.
